


Absence makes the heart grow fonder

by kalikoke



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 19:26:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6533380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalikoke/pseuds/kalikoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wakes up to a world she doesn't know, to a world that's fallen apart. A kind stranger tends to her, but something's missing. Someone's missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Absence makes the heart grow fonder

_I don’t know._

The old man leans back and sighs. 

“It’s alright,” he says. “We’ve got time.”

Time? She remembers time. How there is a before and after. 

The rest of her life, or rather, what came before?

_I don’t know._

He hands her a mirror.

In the glass, a pale face stares back. It is marred by scars. 

On the head, dark hairs stick out in ragged clumps. 

A mouth ajar, but no words come out, just a muffled yelp.

The pieces don’t fit together.

* * *

She does not know the name of the man. The one who is so kind and patient with her. But she trusts him. 

Her own name? A piece of herself she couldn’t get at, couldn’t seem to recover. 

There’s an ache that grasps her nerves and a heaviness that make her limbs feel like lead. 

The old man says it is from what hurt her. He says that ache will subside over time. 

“Somebody told me once,” he looks at her, “that everything heals.”

Of this, she’s not so sure. 

* * *

It starts to come back in rough patches. 

Chapters in her life that read out of order, with pages blank, words missing.

Faceless voices, screaming at her with urgency.

“Please! Go before they-” Then silence.

Unwanted visions that leave her heaving with a pain she can’t unload.

A young woman, blond-haired, her life fading. Face pale, ragged breathing.

A man, looking smug, pointing a gun at her head. Sharp pain, then blackness.

It feels necessary, somehow. To see and feel this all in her mind again. 

* * *

She wakes up, face warm, blood rushing.

She wanted to scream. But her mouth can’t seem to open.

Everything. She needed to smash everything she could see. She stands up, punching her fists into the wall. It doesn’t hurt her.

A loud growl escapes her mouth.

She needed to break everything. She lifts the chair and chucks it at the window. 

It’s already broken anyway, so what does it matter?

The glass shatters and its pieces fall to the floor.

She takes a shard and runs her finger at its edges. The sharpness pricks at her skin. 

She’s about to stab it in her wrist when she feels a hand grip her arm.

It’s the old man, his eyes glowing red, his grip strong.

“Don’t do this!” he growls. “I know what it’s like to wake up feeling like there isn’t a reason to keep going when you’ve lost everything.”

Her fingers loosen their grip on the shard. She feels it slide against her palms, hears it make a tink on the floor.

“But it’s not worth it. We go on. We survive.”

* * *

Maybe she shouldn’t have survived. Whatever it was.

It’s a feeling that claws at her every day, weighs on her so heavily she struggles out of bed.

When she tells the old man of this, he says nothing, but leads her into the kitchen. 

The floors creak like hell when they step foot, and there’s a stench that won’t seem to go away.

He hands her a drink. It tastes bitter on her tongue, but it feels warm inside of her and lets her forget her pain, if only for a bit.

“In a different world, I had a wife and two kids.” His voice is low, face solemn. “Everything-it was all destroyed by war. I thought I’d escaped that by coming here.”

He pauses and closes his eyes, lowers his head. “But war, I suppose, never changes, no matter where you are.”

* * *

She comes to fear what sleep may bring, but finds no relief in waking.

Some days she wakes up with her head pounding. The pale light of daytime assaulting her eyes. The stillness of everything, unsettling. 

The fog of sleep lingers, even as the day goes on, and she feels half in slumber, half awake. 

She can’t escape from her nightmares, from the young woman who screams and pleads. That face, nearly lifeless, haunts her as she makes her way downstairs.

“Think you can help me get some stuff cleaned up?”

It was worth a try, at least. Whatever to make her forget.

She is helping the old man carry boxes around when a torn picture falls out. She leaves the box on the ground and takes the picture in its stead.

There are two faces in the picture. 

On the left, a young woman-it looks like the woman from her dreams, only happier, healthier. Alive. 

She doesn’t know why, but she yearns. She yearns to see this woman here, now, not as a ghostly face in a dream, but somebody she can touch. Somebody she can hug.

On the right, it’s a face that looks much like the face she saw in the mirror. But this one is smiling, whole. 

The door creaks and shivers open. The old man looks at her. He asks if anything is wrong. 

She shakes her head.

She stuffs the picture in her pocket, feeling a piece of herself start to glue back together.

* * *

“Do you remember?”

When she can’t answer, the old man fills in. Or at least, he tries. 

He tells her of what happened before, of the war that decimated what used to be the United States.

“The government collapsed, and that left us at the DE-” he stops, shakes his head. “Another time.”

They continue on in silence until they reach a graveyard of damaged steel and metal, left molten by the war.

Concrete blocks displaced, jutting out.

“This used to be a city. Now it’s a wasteland of fallen buildings, blasted to bits from the war.”

Everything’s all the wrong colors, too subdued. 

Brown where there ought to be green.

Black where there ought to be silver.

Yellow where there used to be sky.

Sky. She remembers the sky. A figure in the sky, flying fast, her blonde hair flowing with the wind. A red cape that billowed behind her.

“You’re smiling,” the old man remarks, returns a smile of his own.

* * *

“I remember now.”

She pulls out the picture from her pocket and shows it to the old man.

“This is Kara,” she points at the figure on the left, “my sister.”

“And you..?”

The old man looks at her and nods, expectant. 

She grasps at the pieces of her memories.

Alex.

She mouths out the sounds; they feel familiar on her tongue.

* * *

“I have to find her. Whatever it takes to bring her back.”

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I don't even know what spurred this. Too much Fallout, probably.


End file.
